Ban on caning not African
The constitution was imposed on African people. President FW de Klerk had a mandate from whites, who had not only elected him as president but endorsed his carrying on with “negotiations to end apartheid”. He went on to hand-pick those he felt comfortable to negotiate with.
The recent Constitutional Court corporal punishment judgment is based on an interpretation of this constitution. True democracy demands that referendums be conducted among the people who have to live in accordance with the provisions of the constitution, especially on cultural things such as corporal and capital punishment.
What a constitution says on these things has to be something endorsed by the majority, not imposed by a few white culture-obsessed, hyperacademised (on the basis of research conducted in Europe or the US among white people) individuals on the rest of the population.
Only when a referendum has been conducted in which every citizen takes part and the majority view has been included can such a constitution claim to be the people’s constitution.
Democracy demands that what guides laws be what citizens are comfortable with. Unfortunately, apartheid has so battered Africans in these parts that they are unable to distinguish between what is imposed on them and their right to have a say in fundamental matters that guide their lives.
Corporal punishment, which was the norm in every home in my formative years, has not churned out violent, irresponsible adults. My contemporaries are responsible members of society doing sterling work in all professions. Even those who did not go far in school are not dominating the ranks of violent thugs.
I have been shocked by trending videos in which teachers are attacked by school pupils. Pupils killing each other never happened in my time of corporal punishment.
In reality, corporal punishment exists as a threat. Knowledge of consequences for bad behaviour managed to keep most children out of such punishment. In my days at school only a few were caned, compared to the total number in school.
Yet corporal punishment is discussed as though it is a wholesale war against children. It cannot be said to be freedom if parents nurtured in a particular culture are deprived of the right to raise children as they please, especially as the basic aim of parents is to guide children to be responsible members of society in their adult years.
Dr Kenosi Mosalakae Houghton